Being forced to work from home since I have a back injury, I've found that I cannot work on any projects that require access to certain internal URLs or that require meeting with other developers/customers. As a result, I've started refactoring one of the ugliest parts of our system. Our "builders" which turn our DBIC objects into XML have been a mess of ugly, procedural code. As a result, trying to allow alternate XML, YAML or JSON formats has been virtually impossible.
Today, while I was separating the data gathering from the serialization, our subversion server went down. The person who maintains that system has just left the BBC, leaving us in a bit of a bind. Fortunately, it doesn't affect me too badly:
git init
I wouldn't dream of working without source control and while it will be annoying to reimport these individual git commits to subversion, at least I can continue working without worrying that it's difficult to revert to a previous working version of my code.
Oh, and our new builders are built on top of Moose. It's made many hard problems much easier to solve. And our serialization formats are Moose::Roles. It's made the problem very, very trivial. Adding a new format now only takes a couple of minutes. Before, it was a couple of years of dreaming that we could do it.
This is one of the things I really like about the current crop of DVCS. You can create your own repo so easily, and so quietly, that it turns into a "do it and move along" operation. Running a local Subverion repo is close, but not quite as good (especially since setting up a local DVCS is not as permanent a decision).
I recently did this for our big product at work. The official system is Source Safe, which is hard for me to like very much. I checked all the code into a private Mercurial repo, which I use for local commits, and tracking changes from other developers. It's lovely!
Re:DVCS under the radar
Ovid on 2009-05-07T20:17:47
People still use Source Safe? Even Microsoft doesn't use it and they developed it. I've used Source Safe in the past and all I can say is "never again".
Re:DVCS under the radar
revdiablo on 2009-05-07T20:54:16
Yeah, it's pretty awful. I've been making a more official push for something better, but my requests are being ignored or redirected. In the meantime, my private Mercurial repo gives me a safety net and helps me sleep a little sounder.
Re:DVCS under the radar
sigzero on 2009-05-08T01:35:40
We do at work...I scream like a Wookie everytime I have to use it.
Adding a new format now only takes a couple of minutes. Before, it was a couple of years of dreaming that we could do it.
This is what I tried to say in Perl Roles versus Interfaces and ABCs. You said it more concisely.
Being forced to work from home since I have a back injury
Having been through a bulging L5/S3...I can certainly sympathize. I hope you get better soon.
Re:I am sorry I didn't know...
jk2addict on 2009-05-08T20:56:16
And damnit, I'm right in the L5/S1 pocket myself. It's been toast now for 4 weeks, ever since I helped a 4 people move an organ out of a church.
I'm due for a consult and a scan next month.
On the plus side, I plan on getting some nice work done once I can stand/sit again after physical therapy...before I have to go back to work....assuming I have to have surgery.Then again, EVE Online could steal my soul.
